Learning

Welp what has 2020 taught me so far? What have I learned? In many instances, it is less about what I’ve learned because, well, you know I’ve lived a few years already, and much more about what I am reminded about.

Life is short. We don’t get out alive. Duh. When you are “of a certain age”, that truth lurks around the edges. When you are rather youngish, it doesn’t because you’re invincible. Age just teaches you the fallacy of that thought.

So if life is short and we don’t get out alive, what’s the purpose? If you have any history study in your life, whether formal from school or reading of your own choice, it’s pretty easy to see that there is nothing new under the sun. So if those who are braver and smarter and richer and more powerful than me have not been able to at least come up with a new evil, let alone a new good, what’s a girl to do or think? Just because we can do more evil faster doesn’t mean there’s anything new.

We can “rage against the machine”, we can allow our hearts to be manipulated by fear and/or greed – which are really just two sides of the same coin. We buy into the scarcity mentality. The opportunities for living in unhealthy ways for selfish reasons are vast! Choose your poison.

If we take nothing with us that we can carry, then is all for naught? Do we just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die?

I refuse to believe that the primary purpose of being is to satisfy myself, to focus on myself in a self-flagellating frenzy of power and acquisition, and to get all I can get. What I know after a few years, and it has taken me a few years, is none of that behavior brings me joy or peace or comfort. Living joyful has a different focus that keeps me from fear based living. Living joyful rests in whether I trust God or not.

Let me clear. Trusting God is not about doing stupid things like ignoring science when it tells me I should take my blood pressure medicine. It is not about demanding what I think are my “rights” when I am asked or told to do something I don’t want to do. If Scripture is silent on something, like say wearing my seatbelt, then I have a responsibility to search a little deeper. Scripture does tell me to honor my body as the temple of the living God. I need to think about how that manifests in my life. Does it mean only one Oreo rather than one package of Oreos? Does it mean shutting off a movie that is glorifying and depicting violence? Does it mean wear my seatbelt? But all of those options are thinking about how I trust God and how I steward well what He has entrusted to me whether it is money, health, or anything else in my life.

I don’t actually control anything. I have lots of illusions of control particularly if I am angry and nasty enough to someone. So I choose to stand in the shelter of the Most High whatever the storm or the valley. When I wander off into danger, I know that He will leave the ninety-nine to come find me.

And of all the things I have re-learned, been reminded of, so far in 2020, that’s where my joy resides.